The recently released second edition of the Jordan Media Survey includes significant findings on Internet usage—including a 100 percent increase in Internet use over last year’s figures—as well as on the most popular online news sources. The survey, prepared by IREX’s Jordan Media Strengthening Program [6], is much-anticipated in a media environment where independent and scientific market research has long been an unaffordable luxury for scores of independent radio stations, newspapers, and new media outlets. The February 25 launch of this year’s survey drew more than one-hundred media managers, owners, editors, advertising agents, and regulators eager for reliable data on the country’s media market.
“We were used to operating in an environment of claims,” says Sawsan Zaydeh, general manager at Radio Al Balad. “Everyone claimed to be the number one station, the number one news website, the number one weekly. Now we have real numbers.”
Survey data shows that 36 percent of Jordanians use the internet—a 100 percent increase from last year, which pollster Muin Khoury describes as “spectacular.”
According to the survey, two-thirds of Jordanian internet users are male and under the age of 30. Almost 33 percent connect from home (including relatives’ and friends’ homes), 27 percent from Internet cafes, 17 percent from universities or other schools, and 17 percent from offices or other workplaces.
The 17 percent of the population that visits news websites choose Al Jazeera, which tops the list, followed by Al Arabiya, CNN, and BBC. Among the local news websites, Al Balad and AmmonNews rival one another for the top spot, with 2.6 and 2.4 percent, respectively.
“You can’t imagine how important this information is for us,” says Al Balad’s Zaydeh.
“We invested in a new design and an aggregation service. The survey showed that it paid off, and that’s the right way to go. We can now go to advertisers (and) knock at more doors.”
Zaydeh makes another important note: her community-based organization could never afford a similar study on its own. “We used to depend on Alexa, and other server-based research, but we believe the way in which this survey was conducted gave us more reliable information.”
The 2009 Jordan Media Survey includes data on print, radio, and online media in terms of market size, reach and readership, audience/reader segmentation, usage and attitudes, and consumer profiling across Jordan, with special focus on East and West Amman. The survey polled 3,600 households across Jordan through field interviews conducted in the second and third week of December 2008. A subset of the sample was surveyed about online and other new media in Amman, Zarqa, and Irbid.
Pollster Muin Khoury is owner and director of Strategies, the company that conducted the survey.
“Independent, reliable, and fresh data is crucial to media sustainability and media development,” he said. “It guides investors, owners, and managers, providing them with audience’s trends. It is a primary tool to evaluate performance and attract advertising revenues.”
The JMSP surveys challenge what observers describe as a vicious cycle: a monopoly-like situation in which advertising agencies also serve as market researchers and can therefore dominate the market with their proprietary information.
The USAID-funded Jordan Media Strengthening Program (JMSP) works with media outlets, training institutes, journalism faculties, and media NGOs to improve the professionalism and sustainability of the Jordanian media sector.
Download the Jordan Media Survey [7]